


The Red and the Grey (The Broken Prism remix)

by Ruuger



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Challenge: Paint It Red, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-14 06:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/pseuds/Ruuger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten colours.  Ten moments in time.</p><p>Written for the The Mentalist remix at <a href="http://z13.invisionfree.com/Paint_It_Red/">Paint It Red</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red and the Grey (The Broken Prism remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Grey and Red](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/22797) by nic73. 



## Red

 _Bloodbath. Bloodshed. Butchery. Carnage. Massacre. Slaughter. Blood. Gore. Viscera._ Before, the meaning of these words had been purely academic to him. Nothing but a random page of the thesaurus he once memorized, stored in the vast libraries of his memory palace. 

The only colour in the room is red. The stylish grey linens his wife picked, the the yellow walls the shade of which they argued over for days when they bought the house. Everything is tinted with crimson.

And on the bed, underneath the bloody grinning face...

(his brain skips, jumps, refuses to acknowledge the sight before him - if he doesn't look at it, maybe it isn't true)

He closes his eyes but the colour remains, burned inside his eyelids like an afterimage, and he knows that it's the only colour he will ever see again.

* * *

## Yellow 

He finds that even now, it's easier to not think. He takes out the teabag and focuses on the movement of his spoon, the whirlwinds it creates in the lukewarm tea. Lipton Yellow Label. Not his first choice, but it's not like he actually had a choice in the matter. But flavour of the beverage is unimportant. What matters is that the cup in front of him is a symbol of freedom, a sign that he is on his way to becoming a productive citizen who is allowed to handle scalding liquids. Or at least tepid ones.

"I see you're doing better, Patrick," Sophie says, and takes a seat next to him.

"I guess I am," he says, and then smiles when she fails to catch the lie.

* * *

## Orange 

On the first morning, he takes his time getting ready. Shower, shave, a three-piece suit. Building himself up layer by layer, until the person that stares back at him in the cracked bathroom mirror resembles an approximation of a human being.

_It's life, Jim, but not as we know it._

There is an uneasy sensation at the pit of his stomach that he cannot identify, the ever-present guilt mixing with excitement as he thinks of the boxes of files the CBI has on Red John. For the first time in months, there is some meaning to his life, something to look forward to, a reason to get up from the bed in the morning.

His new boss is already waiting for him when he finally arrives at the office.

(and how strange is it to imagine himself having a boss)

She's leaning to her car, peeling an orange, the fruit shining like a tiny sun in her hands.

She looks up when she hears him approach, then tilts her head, her eyes narrowing. He feels naked under her scrutiny, terrified that she might see through his carefully constructed masks and realise that there is nothing but emptiness underneath them. Suddenly there's a flash of colour coming towards him, as she raises her hand and tosses the orange at him. He catches it clumsily, his brow furrowing as he looks up at her with a question.

"You look like you haven't eaten in days," she says, then gestures at him to follow her. "C'mon. We've got a murder to solve."

* * *

## Purple 

The sky is already turning purple when he finally finishes the sandcastle. His audience is long gone, and even his new friend has left with her family, leaving him alone on the beach again.

He gives the last tower a final pat, then sits up to take a final look at his creation. He knows he should go find the man with the braided hair, but he doesn't hurry. In the morning the tide will come and the castle will be gone, but the girl at the morgue will still be dead. Nothing last forever, least of all happiness. 

He closes his eyes and focuses his mind, until all that is left in the world is the sound of the waves and the smell of salt in the air. There memories here, lurking on the edges of his consciousness, of another little girl on another beach by the same ocean. He could drown in those memories, like he could walk into the ocean, but not now, not today. 

He opens his eyes again, and stands up, brushing the sand off his clothes before heading towards the trailer park. Today, he has a killer to catch.

* * *

## Blue 

He knows that Lisbon has banned him from cases where the victim is a child. 'Banned' is not quite the right word, as she has simply taken the habit of delegating those cases to the other teams, or, if that's not possible, at least making sure that he is left behind when they visit the crime scene.

She feels that she needs to protect him, wants to shield him from his memories and make sure that he never has to relive the pain of finding his daughter's body. She's right in that he hates those cases, but who doesn't? They make him angry, sad, depressed; make him want to lock himself into his motel room and never come out. Because of all the evils of the world, there aren't many that he finds more reprehensible than robbing a child of a future.

But she's still wrong about one thing. It's not the dead children who remind him of his daughter. 

It's the living ones.

There is always that brief moment when he picks up a child, that fraction of a second when he allows himself to pretend that the baby blue eyes looking at him belong to a child he once held and loved. It's the smell of talcum powder and milk, a time machine more powerful than any mad scientist could ever invent. A conversation with a little boy makes him think of all the books he will never read with his daughter, the smile on the face of a teenage girl reminds him of a future that he can never have. He's used to the grief, but hope can still hurt him.

* * *

## Pink

"He does love you. How could he not?"

He says the words as a test, to see what her reaction is, and though she refuses to rise to the bait, he doesn't miss the quick flash of pink on her face when she thinks of Bosco.

They loved each other once. Still love, even though time and distance have turned that love into something faded and fragile, like a flower pressed between pages of a diary. He doesn't know what it was that drove them apart, though he can make a pretty good guess. A crossed line, a misused trust. It's easier to break a relationship than to glue it back together - no matter how good work you do, the cracks will still be there.

And he, if anyone, knows that.

* * *

## Brown

All his life, he has prided himself on his memory. Learning phonebooks by heart, recalling minor details of his life years after the fact - there is no limit to what he can memorize, and no detail so small that he will forget it.

But he had forgotten about this.

It starts, like so many things, just as a way to wind her up and to test her. To see how she'd react if he asked her to dance with him. But when she says yes, he is surprised by the realisation of just how much he too wanted it, how disappointed he would have been if she'd said 'no'.

He can remember the song, where and when he heard it for the first time right down to what he was wearing, but he had forgotten about _this_.

The touch of her hand, the heat of her body against his. The intimacy of the moment as they move to the rhythm of the music. He had forgotten about dancing, and tenderness, and love. 

Her hair is the same shade of brown as his wife's was, and if he wanted, he could easily pretend that she was someone else. But he resists the temptation and anchors himself in the moment.

He doesn't want to remember. He just doesn't want to forget.

* * *

## Green

The heat of the blaze hits him like a punch to the face, and it takes him a second to understand what he's looking at. The flaming form of Todd Johnson illuminates the cell with its eerie light as he struggles against the cuffs that chain him to the table. The vision is at the same time both too real and unreal, like something out of a big budget blockbuster. 

He cannot take his eyes off the figure before him, but he lets his attention wander, desperately trying to find something to distract himself from the reality of what he's seeing.

There's a green lighter on the bench. 

He focuses on it, trying to memorize its exact location, every little detail about that he can. Todd wouldn't have been allowed to bring a lighter with him to the cell, so it must have been left behind by whoever set the fire. The killer would have also needed an accelerant of some sort, because human bodies are soggy and do not burn easily.

There is a green lighter on the bench.

The lighter has no identifying markings that he can see. It looks cheap, a green plastic casing without any logos or other images.

The guard pushes past him, shoving him out of the way, and points the extinguisher at Todd.

There's a green lighter on the bench.

Todd Johnson was an evil man, about as evil as they get. He killed cops and he killed his fiancé. And he's stopped screaming now, and Jane can't decide if that's good or bad. The fire finally gives out, leaving behind a stench of burning flesh and hair, and he tries to ignore how much the smell reminds him of barbeque.

There's a green lighter on the bench. 

* * *

## White

The white morning light blinds him as he steps outside, and he shields his eyes, blinking until he can see again. Somewhere in the distance he can hear the wailing of approaching sirens. It will be only a few more minutes until the paramedics arrive.

He slips his hand into his pocket and fishes out the leftover pills he took off Steiner's body. It wouldn't do to leave evidence lying around. He can still hear Steiner's strained breath echoing in his ears, a sound that he knows he'll never forget, just like he'll never forget the silence that followed.

He looks at the pills, so small and harmless-looking as they rest on the palm of his hand. He wonders how long it took Steiner to decide it, to make this choice. To just end the pain once and for all. It's a crossroad he himself has faced many times, choosing life over and over again until to continue living almost seems like no choice at all.

As the ambulance curves into the driveway, he tosses the pills into the flowerbed.

To him the choice is easy, because being sorry is a far worse punishment than being dead.

* * *

## Grey

It takes him exactly thirty seconds to talk his way past the security checkpoint without a visitor badge. There are construction workers going back and forth, and the guard, who has clearly missed lunch and just wants the renovations to end, is more than willing to believe that he's a building inspector who's come to make sure that everything is going on schedule.

Of course, he could have just told his name and asked the guard to call upstairs, but where's the fun it that?

The elevators are new, all glass and chrome, and he takes the opportunity to check his reflection on the mirror on the back wall. He brushes his hand down the front of his new grey suit to smooth the creases, then runs his hand through his hair. He's not a vain man, never has been, but he feels a desperate need to prove himself, to present himself in the best possible light. It almost feels being on his way to a job interview - or, he corrects himself, what he thinks he would feel on his way to a job interview, if he'd ever actually been to one.

He spots her all the way from across the room, no mean feat when the agents surrounding her are all a head taller than she is. He can feel a smile tugging his lips as he thinks of telling that to her, and the exasperated roll of her eyes the comment would have elicited. She's leaning over a table, tracing her finger over what he assumes is a map as she explains something to the other agents. When he gets closer he realises that she has cut her hair short again, and not for the first time he's struck with the thought that he's been thrown back in time to to his first day at the CBI, in some alternative universe version of his life where the world is full of colours instead of being tinted red. 

"Hey."

She looks up at the sound of his voice, and the expression on her face reflects so many emotions at once that even he can't catch them all. 

"Jane."

"One and the same."

He can tell that the other agents are more curious about why he's back than she is, and maybe she can tell too because she dismisses them with a wave of her hand. "Give me a moment, guys."

When the bullpen is finally empty, she tilts her head and gives him a long look. She's trying to look stern, but failing, the small quirk of her lips betraying her. She always was a lousy actor.

"You're looking good," she says, her voice neutral. "New suit?"

"Yeah." He gives her a little twirl, and her smile blossoms into a quick burst of laughter.

"Looks expensive."

"It was. Hence my coming here." For some reason the words that's he's rehearsed in his head seem difficult to pronounce, and he has to swallow hard before managing to get them out. "I was thinking of coming back to work."

Her face is a mask, but he knows her well enough to tell that she's trying to read him to figure out what his motivation for coming back really is. Money, boredom, depression, loneliness. He can imagine her going through the options one by one. He wonders which one she will pick, because the truth is, he doesn't really know the answer yet himself either. He picks a piece of grey contruction paper off the floor for something to do with his hands, and begins to fold it into a rose.

"Who says you still have a job? You haven't turned up to work in over seven months." When she finally speaks, he almost laughs out in relief. No pity, then. And no judgement. To an outsider, her words would have sounded harsh, but to him they are the sweetest benediction.

"I have certain amount of influence around here," he says, leaning closer, his voice lowering. "The Senior Agent in Charge of the CBI is a very close personal friend of mine. She pretty much owes her career to me."

"Oh really?"

"Oh yes, I taught her everything she knows."

She leans forward to smack him, but he dodges her easily. She glares at him half-heartedly for a few seconds before her expression softens.

"So you've heard."

Good old Grace; she of the Christmas letters and long, gossipy emails. "I have my sources. I'm guessing there wasn't much competition for the job."

This time, Lisbon's quick enough hit his arm. 

"Oh, hush," she says with a roll of her eyes before falling serious again. "Are you sure you want to come back? With Red John gone, you don't-"

He interrupts her, not wanting to hear her finish. "Yes."

She smiles, and gestures him to follow. "C'mon then, let's go do the paperwork."

He lets out a theatrical groan. "Paperwork? Actually, I changed my mind. I don't want to come back after all."

"Crime fighting is hard. Suck it up," she sing-songs, and grips the lapel of his coat to lead him to her new office. 

She goes to sit behind her desk, but stops, turning to face him again. "I've missed you, Jane," she says, and then, after only a brief hesitation, closes the distance between them and pulls him into a hug.

As he wraps his arms around her, he slips the crude origami rose into her jacket pocket.

"I missed you too."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I picked the fic to remix simply by randomly reading my recipient's stories until I got an idea, which this time was to take the colours of the ficlets and switch them around, and to retell the each story with the opposite colour.


End file.
